Many firsts in Liberia's historic presidential election
In Africa's first independent country , home to Africa's first single-party state , Africa's first female president is preparing for the country's first democratic transition of power in over 70 years, but is accused of improperly interfering in the first round of voting . The election, whose first round was held October 10, can be correctly characterized as the first step toward "the first time in recent memory that a democratically elected Liberian president will hand power to a similarly elected head of state," since the last time such a transition happened was back in 1944. Liberia's history as an independent country began back in 1847, making it the first independent country on the continent. Prior to that it was a colony of the United States , settled by free-born black Americans and freed slaves. Over the next hundred years, presidential transfers of power occurred on a regular basis, although the True Whig Party dominated politics fr